Rape suspect researched marketing campaign to clear man ‘wrongly jailed for 17 years over 2003 assault’ and appeared up how lengthy DNA is saved earlier than being traced in ‘billion-to-one match’, jury hears

An alleged rapist accused of carrying out an attack for which an innocent man spent 17 years behind bars searched the case online before being traced through a ‘one in a billion’ DNA match, a court heard today.

Andrew Malkinson was finally freed from jail in 2020 having been wrongly convicted of the 2003 attack on a motorway embankment in Salford, Greater Manchester based on ‘mistaken’ identification by witnesses, a jury was told.

But it was not until 2022 that Paul Quinn, now 51, was arrested in Devon after his DNA was matched to samples taken from the victim’s clothing at the time, Manchester Crown Court heard.

His DNA had been on the national police database since 2012, jurors were told today.

Quinn – who at the time of the attack lived a short distance from the scene, and allegedly knew the area well – ‘strenuously’ denies strangling and raping the woman, prosecutor John Price KC said.

However examination of his internet search history revealed that he looked up an article about Mr Malkinson being jailed in 2019 – a year before newspapers began covering the campaign to clear his name – and then Googled ‘wrongly convicted cases uk’, jurors were told.

The following year he looked up ‘police searching you’ on YouTube, then in 2021 went on Google Maps to view the road where the attack took place, Mr Price said – despite now living nearly 200 miles away in Exeter.

Quinn could have ‘no earthly reason’ for carrying out research about the case before his arrest if his subsequent account to police that he is not the rapist is true, Mr Price argued. 

Instead, the prosecutor suggested, the truth may be that Quinn was ‘expecting the police to come calling’ because he assumed his DNA would be traced. 

Further news stories in July 2022 reporting that an unknown man had been linked to the rape through new DNA evidence were followed by a ‘very profound change’ in Quinn’s browsing habits, the court heard.

Following his arrest in December 2022, Quinn told police he recalled how ‘somebody got done’ for the 2003 attack as he was living nearby at the time, but that he ‘just forgot about it’, the jury heard.

His browsing history dating back to 2017 revealed that he ‘rarely visited’ news websites, the court heard.

However in the months running up to his arrest he had been conducting regular internet searches into DNA sampling.

Quinn knew that his own DNA was on the national database, having been asked by police to provide a sample in 2012, Mr Price said.

In August 2022 – four months before his arrest – he did a Google search for ‘how long is DNA kept in database’, the court heard.

A week later he searched for ‘why do I keep sweating all the time… why am I sweating so much all of a sudden’.

The next day he looked up ‘how long is your DNA kept on the database’, ‘Can you refuse to give a DNA sample to the police UK’ and ‘Is my DNA in a database UK’.

Quinn also looked up an article on a law firm website about whether police could retain DNA ‘forever’, Mr Price said.

‘Why?’ the prosecutor asked.

Mr Malkinson was ‘unrelenting’ in his efforts to clear his name, jurors were told today, ultimately developing into a ‘campaign’ which attracted ‘a great deal of publicity’.

But Quinn was ‘onto it before it became prominent,’ Mr Price said.

Mr Malkinson unsuccessfully appealed his rape conviction in 2006, the court heard, making failed attempts to ask the Criminal Cases Review Commission to take up his case in 2009 and again in 2019.

A third application was granted in 2023 – by which time he had been freed from prison – with his appeal allowed by judges later that year.

On Wednesday jurors were told that Mr Malkinson ‘was the victim of a most terrible miscarriage of justice, one of the worst there has been’.

It was a ‘sad’ element of the case that DNA allegedly implicating Quinn came to light as part of Mr Malkinson’s efforts to clear his name, Mr Price said.

When Mr Malkinson was arrested, DNA testing was inconclusive, and no traces of semen were ever found.

He was convicted based on identification by witnesses, including the victim.

However in 2007 new tests on traces of saliva from the victim’s vest top identified DNA from a male who was not Mr Malkinson.

This tallied with a serious injury to her left nipple which was ‘partially severed’ by what a pathologist concluded was a bite, the jury heard.

At this point, ‘alarm bells’ about the safety of Mr Malkinson’s conviction ought to have rung, the prosecutor said – however he ended up spending another 13 years behind bars.

It was only in 2022 that the profile was traced to Quinn, the court heard, with the chances of it belonging to anyone else placed at less than one in 1 billion.

Interviewed by police, Quinn denied raping her but said he couldn’t recall if they’d ever had sex.

He told detectives he had been ‘highly promiscuous’ as a young man and had ‘slept with literally hundreds of women’, never wearing a condom.

He also admitted he and a group of friends would regularly go on nights out nearby, drinking and taking drugs, admitting his route home passed the scene of the attack.

Police also spoke to Quinn’s ex-wife, Catherine.

Jurors were told that eye witnesses described the attacker as wearing an unbuttoned shirt exposing his ‘completely hairless’ chest and that he was ‘sweating profusely’.

They were shown pictures of Quinn as a young man with his top off, showing his ‘very hairy chest’.

The ex-wife told detectives that Quinn came home on the night of the attack without his shirt, which he was in the habit of unbuttoning or removing while dancing.

Jurors were told that Mrs Quinn recalling telling him: ‘You better hope that they don’t find your shirt anywhere near there.’

She also said he habitually shaved off his chest hair every summer as it made him ‘itchy’, leaving his torso ‘completely bald’.

The alarm was raised at around 5.30am on July 19, 2003 by a dog walker who encountered the ‘distressed’ and ‘dazed’ woman.

She told police she had scratched her assailant’s face, causing the tip of one of her fingernails to snap off.

The woman described him as olive skinned and tanned, about 5ft 8in tall and of muscular build.

Police officers immediately suspected her description matched Mr Malkinson, who lived just 1.5 miles from the scene.

Even though he had no facial injuries, he was arrested, with the rape victim picking out his face in a digital identification procedure.

His identification was subsequently corroborated by two witnesses who reported seeing a man in an unbuttoned shirt hiding in bushes.

But there is ‘no alternative plausible explanation’ for how Quinn’s DNA came to be on her clothing other than he was the real attacker, Mr Price said.

His appearance at the time closely matched the description, while the ‘obscure’ location of the attack required ‘prior knowledge’ of the area.

Quinn’s defence may ‘invite’ jurors to consider whether Mr Malkinson was in fact the ‘true assailant’, the prosecutor said.

But the case against Quinn does not feature evidence of witness identification, meaning it ‘contains none of the intrinsic weaknesses… used, wrongly, to convict Andrew Malkinson’, he submitted.

In a prepared statement, Quinn told police he could not explain the DNA evidence or remember if he had ‘slept’ with the victim.

However Mr Price submitted that the truth was that the explanation for the DNA match was simple – that Quinn had carried out the rape.

Quinn, of Exeter, Devon, denies two counts of rape, causing GBH and attempting to choke or strangle with intent to commit an offence.

The trial continues.